Retrospective from 2016 as We Near Yet Another Capricon: The Search for Bob Kearny
It’s a windy, cold February day, expected to hit zero degrees by morning. Shasta and Mommy are staying at the Westin in Wheeling for another Capricon, a favorite sci fic con that mommy attends each year. Mommy has put on her soft, gray owl shirt. The owl looks fried, a possible illustration for a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Mommy looks about as tired and fried as the owl. She is getting jobs. She added Lincolnshire #103. She expects to add Grayslake #46 next week. Wheeling #WhateverTF long-term Spanish may have gotten away, though. Mommy hit send on the app and then failed to pick up a call from Principal Bob Kearny of Cooper Middle School, not finding its traces on the landline for a couple of days. Kearny has not returned two calls. Wheeling may have escaped.
Shasta is wearing a shiny red spandex outfit, skin tight around her slug’s body. Shasta is an invisible slug, about as large as a medium-sized dog. She has abandoned the usual top hat in favor of a long-haired, purple wig, held on by a copper-colored pair of steampunk goggles covered with wheels and gears. She is resting on a simple, black velvet flying carpet, about five feet off the floor, in the space between the two double beds in the Westin Hotel room. Shasta wonders what mommy is doing.
Shasta: Why do we want Bob Kearny to talk to us mommy?
Mommy: The suburb is right next door. I hear it pays well, too.
Shasta: Do you even like subbing?
Mommy: I don’t know. Maybe I will when I actually get around to it. As far as I can tell, I mostly hunt for jobs for no pay yet. My job is to do job interviews. Just like I write a top-secret blog with 13,500 users that makes no money whatsoever. I seem to have a real knack for not making money.
Shasta: Well, who needs money?
Mommy: It’s good to be a giant, invisible, young slug. I’d like that uncomplicated life. I don’t want to interfere with the purity of your vision, but money is kind of useful. You want a great mystery? I have a graduate degree in marketing from a school that is among the best in the country. I know I could market. Hell, I once wrote an article for Home Office Computing Magazine that made a small, software company’s year. I could market. But I don’t.
Chekhov is about to be captured. Oops. Now he is about to have a seemingly catastrophic fall.
Shasta: It’s that “kind of useful” mommy. If you went for money, you would get money, whether you or the owl are fried or not. But I am worried about this subbing thing.
Mommy: It seems like a natural move. I qualify. I like the idea of being able to work or not work whenever I want. Once I find the right classrooms, the job might even be fun.
Shasta: Don’t think too hard. That’s what I always say. But this may be one of those pigs-have-wings things. We have to do some thinking on this one, mommy, we do. This might be a thinking type thing. This might even be a hell-no-I-won’t-go. Just because the path goes ever onward, doesn’t mean we have to stay on the path. In fact, that “ever onward” might be a great reason to get off the path. Right now.
How about that Starbucks? You could get a green apron! I’d rather have a green apron than a badge that opens school security doors. I’d like to hit those security doors with a blaster. And I’d rather have a free pound of coffee every week than an extra couple hundred of dollars after four weeks of hell.
Mommy: You need to have a more positive attitude!
Shasta: No, I don’t. Everybody talks about positive freaking attitudes. Everybody talks about gratitude. And gratitude journals. And how great Mr. Spock is. But that doesn’t mean they are right.
Mommy: They are about Mr. Spock, although I am not sure everyone is talking about him. Not even here, and we may have a biased sample. This is a science fiction convention.
Shasta: I sure hope they save those humpback whales. But you get what I mean. Yes, be positive. Be grateful. But don’t let that control your life. Too much positive and you keep on that forever path. You stay when you ought to go.
Mommy: Too true.
Shasta: That Kearney guy should be an object lesson. Did he make you feel good? No, he did not. I say, make lattes, not war.
What are we doing today anyway?
Mommy (laughs): Yeah, enough deep thought. At 11:30, I want to go to the panel on antibiotics. I need a shower, first. Then the usual: art show, panels, dealers room, con suite. There’s a Star Wars panel. And that Klingon girl is giving a concert. We are going to have linner at Spears, the place with the good crab cakes, pretzels and brussels sprouts.
(Later that day after the art auction.)
Shasta: So did we decide anything?
Mommy: Nope. We’ll have three districts soon. We’ll give that a shot. I think we should do the districts near us, too. Then we’ll be done. If it doesn’t work, Shasta, I think we could try to sell art. People do. We’re just killing time anyway. Were you listening to that stuff about the Great Filter? Fascinating.
Shasta: He said we are first, we are rare or we are gaf*cked.
Mommy: Hope for rare. The odds that we are the first intelligent civilization ever are lower than infinitesimally low. I mean, seriously, how old is the universe? All those stars with all those planets, and we are first. That would be winning the Powerball of Powerballs. Which leaves rare or gaf*cked. I’ll go with rare although I think the zombies are coming from somewhere.
Shasta: (Squeaks, alarmed. She whirls the black, velvet carpet around, peering in all directions.) What zombies? Where mommy? Quick, get on the carpet!
Mommy: (Smiles.) No, silly, the hypothetical zombies. The Walking Dead. Feed by Myra Grant. Twenty-eight days. The many, many children of George Romero. The Morning, Night, Day and Mid-Afternoon of the Living Dead. Why do we crave white walkers? On some level, maybe we are preparing ourselves for the Great Filter. I wonder if Wikipedia has the Great Filter. (Mommy goes to look.)
Readers: Never heard of the Great Filter? Look it up on a day when you feel like contemplating Big Ideas that Don’t End Well.
